No info on BMC's website on tidal wave that hit Mumbai

By Chetna Yerunkar |Posted 15-Jun-2014

The civic body’s website, which was launched with much fanfare on May 28, failed to give any updates about the tidal wave, which struck the city on June 12

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) launched its website, www.mumbaimonsoon.com, amid much fanfare on May 28 this year as an image-building exercise and also to give citizens vital information about temperature, humidity, wind, pressure as per locations, tidal waves, traffic diversions, ongoing infrastructure work across the city and weather forecasts by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD). But the website failed to live up to its claim and didn’t show any results on the height of the tidal waves, which took the city by surprise on June 12.

Ironically, this was an attempt by the municipal body to win some brownie areas from citizens especially since every year, it gets brickbats as it fails to get Mumbai monsoon ready.

The civic body’s website was launched on May 28 this year

When this correspondent logged on to the website, she didn’t get any information. On Saturday, when she logged on to the site again, the temperature, humidity, wind and pressure areas were blank, despite the city witnessing light showers.The website is not the only chink in the civic body’s armour. The mobile app, too, which has the same name as the site, is not popular among citizens, as the BMC has not created awareness about it.

Devendra Amberkar, the leader of Opposition at BMC and a Congress corporator, said, “The website was supposed to be launched last year, but was delayed for a year due to a technical glitch. Now that it has launched, it doesn’t provide much information. When the city faced high tide on Thursday, the website had no information on it. I informed the BMC officials about it and asked them to fix the site.”

Mahesh Narvekar, who heads the IT department at BMC, claimed, “The complaints were addressed immediately. There might have been technical issues due to which the information wasn’t visible on the site but now it is functioning properly.”